Encryption is a process of transforming your important information into a unreadable form so that only your intended recipients can decrypt and read it.
From main menu, choose "Privacy > Encrypt" to enter this screen. Once entered, you will be presented with a form to enter necessary data to encrypt:
This is where you can type e-mail, paste or load data to encrypt
This is a list box to allow you choose your intended recipient of the encrypted data; the recipient must have a public key imported on your keyring and can be yourself as well
Optionally you can specify a file to save your encrypted data
There is currently only one option; if you want to digitally sign your data at the same time while it is encrypted, check the "Sign As Well" box
On the toolbar, there are two buttons --
and
.
button is used to clear out the form if you do something
wrong and want to start over.
is used to start the
encryption process after you have filled out the encryption data form.
Once the encryption is done, the output will be saved into a file if you have specified one. At the same time, the output will also be sent to the data area. The output looks something similar to this:
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) hQHOAzMChRL7tngnEAcAsucaiLOiNOSlo9u2Y2rcCieJqhf37h/wJk4S0Dd47+X2 ysCMDV/T7SqCs55yKChCYeGzCUdFfiAG7/mGUDGabB5I/PdXMsI6OZIfnNwaty2X N1POvifuHgncLm6aekOeGEqbcUILFOiQYHGfaseSbodQsL/e4yRUq6Y19+dR4DT3 kL7DfS6JfHMW/AzVvmroiKxlAD8lEkLaYiHX0EF7PbROMf2DnFsYSNKJ12kYQF5m q13IGEWsBRO2E5qEICjsvt4UY71U+OWLYOd6RKyi0ss7ut7SIOLD6GPRlO4zNVYH APekjteOFacPzFAnHlR+XvWmvKDOKaJq7FS9I3LxTrN6/SstIA9DaNRKbp0R/L8o zrNT8i4/jB/bAte+/YITbFhNr8gqnk2gg5GDoJ0cfSLG2KJGr6z8q7i7dZGgCYuS F6PAOjbaX81aMP209OOQTRwaLHINUwZqOnnUbX9IAvgVsfsehh7va2ibFbr6HeDx Bn9aE+Icz4QuIR+cjqKtaBCjdGJ6scWcogCQewVWcPxcH+1aL41+vb6FQBG6M/2n ER7mmON5HU+yaDeWvusF4pqar+wtuzUTUXcXjYJfTKzb0mMBP+L4ldjMBZZFys+0 82NV6wecobs2KrkWAEDIPx0pciURfxVwHZFRnYtsfFCe8ZxTJliXWTtw3f91JHST 28N5SRRwGpnDIBkNNkhMiEkv7QgeLVDEAEEr2ffp8UPPaRMvEgs= =Kte2 -----END PGP MESSAGE-----
As you can see, this does not make much sense to human eyes. If your original information is an e-mail to one of your friends, now it is the time you cut and paste the encrypted e-mail or attach the output file and send it to him/her. With the encryption, you are confident your information is safe traveling on the Internet. No one should be able to read it except your friend who has the key to decrypt it.
Finally do not edit anything between the encrypted output. It is fine to insert or append anything before and after the encrypted output without affecting the integrity of the message. This means, if you cut and paste the encrypted output into your e-mail to your friend, you can insert several lines of plain text before the encrypted information to remind your friend this is an encrypted e-mail that should be decrypted before reading. Of course, you should not reveal your concealed message in the inserted plain text. Otherwise, encryption loses its intended meaning.